


The More You Know

by DreamerInSilico



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Biting, Electricity, F/M, Fluff, Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:22:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerInSilico/pseuds/DreamerInSilico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders had a lot of preconceptions about Merrill, like most people did.  And, like most people, was wrong about almost all of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The More You Know

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to one of cypheroftyr's open prompts for Anders Porn Week.

_I won’t kill you_ , Hawke had said, his voice harsh and his eyes full of stormclouds. _But I never want to see your face again._

It had been Merrill who had kept him from martyrdom that day, beyond question – she had found him doubling back to throw himself against his erstwhile companions and their templar allies, grabbed his shoulders when he snarled at her and tried to charge past, for all her frame was twigs and sunlight to his relative human bulk. He still did not know how she had managed to quiet Justice long enough for him to listen to her certainty that _you will do more good elsewhere, alive,_ and he was not sure he even wanted to… but most of the time, he was grateful for it. 

She had changed, that day. All her lighthearted naiveté – if it had ever truly existed in the first place – had been burned away by Hawke’s betrayal, leaving sharp-edged purpose dusted with humor like the memory of innocence… much like another disillusioned mage he could name. Anders knew she had been sweet on the warrior; by what he’d seen, Hawke had only ever toyed with her affection, but that had to have made it so much worse when he raised his sword against the Circle, against the idea that their kind could ever truly live outside the shadow of a templar blade. 

Now they traveled together for Ferelden, and while he did not relish the possibility of his Grey Warden history catching up to him, they both clung to hope that Lirenn Mahariel was still the friend to mages she been during the Blight, and the friend to Merrill she had been in childhood. 

The elf mage was such a strange creature. 

Justice, of course, still did not approve of her one bit, but her penchant for blood magic was a lot harder to fixate upon when she was his staunch ally, and all the others he had thought more reliable had abandoned him. ( _Abandoned them both._ ) She would go whole days in silence now, moving with a focused deliberateness that had not been there before. And then something would shift as quickly as night falls in an Anderfels winter, and she would be singing an elvhen tune or chattering about the local flora or telling one of her circuitous and half-nonsensical stories about aravels or halla or obscure Dalish social gaffes… and stranger still, he would be laughing. Back in Kirkwall, he had been quite certain that was something he would literally never do again. (When the entirety of one’s presumed remaining lifespan was some fraction of a hopeless battle against an enemy force that _existed_ to subdue your kind, there wasn’t much room to plan for enjoyment of any sort.) It was… nice. 

Sometimes – rather disturbingly often, really – he would catch her watching him, across the campfire at night, or while they worked at their shared camp chores, or sidelong as they walked during the day. Had it been anyone else, the vestiges of his younger self would have taken it for attraction, at the very least _imagined_ responding to it, and enthusiastically responded more often than not. Knowing Merrill, he probably just had an insect on his shoulder or a rip in his pants or she was trying to see Justice behind his skin. Her attention was always so easy to catch, always flitting around like an energetic butterfly…

Except, in some ways, he didn’t really know Merrill at all. 

“You know,” she said, with that musical lilt that made her sound so much younger than she really was, “it almost feels like I’m back with my clan, walking so much and always having company.” Slim fingers scarred from bramble and knife alike combed through his hair, separating pieces to braid them back, away from his face. “Except that there are no aravels and no Keeper, and well – you’re not an elf, and you’re not afraid to get near me, and that is a good thing! But I should think that if you were an elf you would have very pretty ears…” 

This chatter, at least, was familiar to him, even if he was still getting used to the hands in his hair. She had seen him batting it irritably out of his eyes all through one afternoon as it escaped from a queue that had grown longer and glossy since their escape from the torn city, and then somehow a handful of minutes later, she was combing it out and binding it for him. Bemused, he had borne it then and grew to enjoy it, these uncomplicated whispers of touch when he had had barely a brush of fingers with anyone who wasn’t a patient in ages. 

“Ears can be pretty?” he asked. She couldn’t see his raised eyebrow, but it was there. 

“Oh yes!” She tugged lightly on the braid she was working on. “They have shape, don’t they? And color? Anything on a person can be pretty.” There was a pause. “And yours are quite nice even without being pointed, of course,” she added hastily. 

Anders laughed. “Thanks… I think.” 

“You’re welcome. But what I meant was – about the clan, not the ears – that I don’t feel so very lonely anymore. The Alienage was so crowded, yet inside my little house it was like that was the whole world, sometimes, without another soul in it.” 

“That’s… that’s good.” He sighed in quiet pleasure at the way her fingertips tickled his scalp. “I’m glad I’m not so terrible to travel with,” Anders murmured, and some part of him was faintly surprised at how much he meant it. 

The silence hung around them for a moment, and then there was a slight huff from behind him. Exasperation? Why? 

“…And they say _I_ cannot see what is right in front of me,” Merrill muttered. 

“What?” Anders asked, almost petulantly. “What am I supposed to be seeing? You’re behind me, at any rate.” 

But a heartbeat later, she wasn’t. 

She was very much in front of him, leaning over with her green eyes wide and serious and playful and sly all at once, and he had almost no time at all to contemplate the nuances of her expression, because her lips were against his, and then he no longer cared enough to try. 

It had been _so long_ since anyone had kissed him, and this was so unexpected that he froze, startled, at her first touch. He felt the hesitant brush of her tongue across his unmoving lower lip, but when he didn’t respond, she made a small sound of dismay and began to pull away. That broke him out of his shock enough to reach up with one slightly-shaking hand to cup the back of her head (her hair was so _soft!_ ) and bring her back to him. 

This time, he opened his mouth to meet her tongue with his own, tasting a faint trace of tea and what could only be described as _Merrill_. Made bolder by his acceptance, she pressed in hard and deep enough to steal the breath from his chest with her fervor. 

_Maker_ – they had all thought her so innocent. (Save perhaps Isabela before she left, whose bawdy comments had made her blush, but who had smiled in private amusement when the others had teased the little mage. What had she known that they – _Stop thinking so much, you idiot, and kiss her. If you still remember_ how.) 

Anders remembered. Oh, he remembered. She was leaning forward, both hands holding his face and buried in his hair, but she was still standing while he sat, too far away. His free hand reached up and around her waist to pull her forward gently, and when she bumped against his knees, he tugged downward on her hip to guide her to settle, straddling his lap. When he nipped at her lower lips, she nipped back, and pulled just slightly away with a quiet, chiming laugh. 

“Oh, you _do_ know what to do when someone kisses you.” The resemblance to his inner monologue was rather uncanny. “Despite what I’d heard, I was beginning to wonder!” 

It made him a lot more indignant than his inner monologue did, though. 

“Really now? You try living with a stick-in-the-mud spirit in your head for a few years and see how frisky you stay.” Fortuitously, said stick-in-the-mud was being quiet today, however. He tightened his grip on her waist and grinned a bit. 

“I’d rather not,” she answered airily, eyes dancing. “Doesn’t seem like much fun at all.” Her smile turned into a positively impish grin as she leaned forward again to speak into his ear. “Hello? Justice? Are you asleep right now?” 

“Trust me, you want him to stay that way,” Anders growled, but not too convincingly, because her warm breath in his ear was wreaking havoc on his composure. 

“Oh, certainly. If he was awake, he’d have to put up with me doing things like _this_.” And then her mouth was on the side of his throat, her slick tongue so hot against his skin it almost seemed to burn, her lips silken-smooth where they parted, and – and – _TEETH_. He couldn’t stop his groan, or the way his fingers clenched of their own accord and pulled her tighter against his body. “As long as Anders likes it, that is,” she whispered against the place he would surely have a bruise in the morning. A lovely, glorious bruise. 

“If you can’t feel the answer,” he said with a gasp, rolling his hips upward for emphasis, “then we’re both wearing _far_ too much clothing.” He dragged his right hand from her neck down the line of her body, just barely feeling her spare curves and fine-boned strength beneath her thick tunic and chainmail. “… On second thought, we’re both wearing too much clothing, regardless.” 

Merrill trilled a laugh. “Oh, good.” She parted the collar of his shirt with clever fingers which then proceeded to dance across his collarbone, but as wonderful as it felt, he couldn’t let her have all the fun. He had her scarf off and cast away in no time, revealing a long, pale neck that he stretched to further exposure by pulling her head backward, gently but firmly by the hair. Then it was his turn to draw out her softly incoherent moans as he licked and bit his way up the front of her throat, not stopping at her sharp jaw, but instead nipping along it until he reached her ear. (He considered, briefly, and decided that _yes_ , in fact, ears could definitely be pretty.) He knew this was the right place to go when her whole body tensed even before his lips touched it, her breath stopped mid-gasp in anticipation. 

Anders took his time with that, sucking lightly on the lobe and reveling in the hitching sigh it provoked, then licking ever-so-slowly up the long, tapered cartilage. When he reached the pointed tip, he paused, teasing it with his tongue until she was shuddering. “Anders – !” 

He grinned and bit down, and she _wailed_. It might have been worrisome, had her hips not jerked forward at the same time to grind against him, and it was a _really good thing_ that that chainmail of hers didn’t go everywhere because he was hard as a rock and cloth was so much nicer against him than metal would be. 

Of course, skin was magnitudes better than cloth, in turn. They should start working on that. 

As soon as she had stopped shaking – or mostly stopped, anyway – Merrill seemed to have the same idea, dragging his shirt up over his head almost desperately. He had her tunic and pauldrons off nearly as quickly, but her mail and her leather greaves and bracers proved more difficult, especially with both their fingers made clumsy by desire. When he was down to his trousers and Merrill to her smalls, they both abruptly realized they were still outside and the night breeze was _chilly_ , so he lifted her flush against him, her legs wrapping around his waist and her arms about his neck as he carried her into the tent. 

Their two separate bedrolls were hastily unfolded to make one mostly-soft pile of blankets, and their remaining clothing fell unceremoniously by the canvas wall. Once upon what now seemed like a very long time ago, Anders had thought Merrill childlike, but the leanly-muscled, lithe, and somewhat scarred body that he uncovered could not be mistaken for anything but a woman’s, and her grass-green eyes had changed again, grown shadowed and knowing. 

He kissed her again, slow and deep, and she met him eagerly, running calloused fingertips in maddening patterns across his flanks and lower back that sent what felt like tiny jolts of lightning straight to his groin. 

Lightning. He had a nickname to live up to, now didn’t he? 

She squeaked in surprise at the first brush of his barely-charged fingers at her shoulders, but when he pulled them back, concerned, she laughed and shook her head. “No, please! That was lovely.” That made him grin, and he felt almost, _almost_ like his old, wayward self as he obliged her, trailing sparks just strong enough to tingle down and around the curves of her small breasts, where he lingered, delighting in their firm softness against his hands. She gasped when his thumbs brushed her nipples, and he found himself pulled into another kiss, this one with a frantic edge that only sharpened as he continued to drag his hands lazily downward. 

He wanted her now, with an intensity that felt like it would set him aflame. But not yet. No, he would do this right. He’d left the horny Circle teenager behind long, long ago. 

Breaking the kiss, he sank to his knees gracefully enough to keep his hands moving lightly across her skin, and when he nudged at her inner thigh, she gasped and complied with the silent suggestion to move her feet apart. 

Anders kept his “sparklefingers” on her legs and hips – it wouldn’t do to set up expectations that other parts of his anatomy couldn’t later meet – but he leaned forward to part her lower lips delicately with his tongue, smiling against her skin at the noises she made and the trembling fingers back in his hair. He lapped at her just firmly enough to tease without completely satisfying, until her legs were shaking in earnest and she tugged his head away from her. 

Merrill knelt in front of him then, and he took a certain amount of pride at the way she staggered when she did so. She licked her own moisture off his lips, which turned into another full kiss, with her teeth on his lips and _she was sucking on his tongue. Maker._

“Lie down,” she ordered, a smirk in her voice. He supposed he had been moaning. Well, she could be smug if she wanted to – he had better things to think about. 

Like her hands on his shoulders, pressing him down onto the blankets, like her teeth that had found the crook of his neck again – _AH!_ – and like her tight, velvet heat as she sank down upon him, locking their bodies together. 

No, he hadn’t known Merrill, hadn’t _seen_ Merrill – now she was all he could see, all he could hear, all he could feel. 

He was glad he knew better, finally.


End file.
